Meet the Seeker
by moonswirl
Summary: Prelude #1 to ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH, coming in July. (See author's note inside) An AU story set across the Arrowverse. In this installment: Discover the origins of the one known as Seeker... once upon a time known as Lena Luthor.


_**A/N:** I was meant to start writing and posting these back in January, however life happened, and progress didn't happen, so now here I am, a little over two months late but finally kicking things off! This coming July, as I've done for the past two summers, I'll be leading a 100-day countdown story set across the Arrowverse (featuring Supergirl, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Arrow). I decided to do things a little differently this year. For one thing, the entire 100 days will be a single story spread over 100 days, one chapter to every day. And for another, the more planning I did, I saw the possibility and the need to lay in some ground work in the form of preludes._

 _Twenty-four prelude one-shot stories, six each to the four series (again, it was meant so that each month from January to June would have one of each show, but now… yeah ;)), posted every 5 (or 6) days. Today I will be posting both the one meant for today, and the one that should have gone up on March 5th._

 _The story this will all be leading to, **Once More Unto the Breach** , is an alternate universe story (not another Earth, ha :D), which will soon become evident enough. It's very possible you do not watch all four of the shows, but I highly encourage you to seek out the other preludes, as they will help to fill in this world I'm very excited to share with you guys!_

 _Alright, enough chit chat, let's go! If you have any questions, send them my way and I'll be happy to answer them!_

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 **MEET THE SEEKER  
** _Prelude to_ _ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH  
_ (1 of 24)

 **Location:**  
 _ **BREACH EARTH, WAR QUARTER**_  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

When they named her Seeker, she accepted it as the signal for her to leave behind the things that needed to left behind, if she was ever to move forward. She left her name, and her comfortable life of lies, left behind grief and dissatisfaction. Someone had hit the reset on who she was and who she could become, and from here on out, she'd get to decide.

Now, it wasn't as though her life had been bad, back when her name had been Lena Luthor.

If anything, her life had been about as good as it could get, considering what the world outside her window was like. Sometimes it felt as though the war had been going for as long as she'd been alive, even though it hadn't. She'd been, oh… ten years old? All those years before, it did feel more like a dream than anything real, someone else's life, no doubt. One morning she'd awakened to chaos, and she might as well have been born that day, because nothing else could have mattered. Her father wad dead. Her older brother, sweet Lex, was dead. All that remained was the two of them, her mother and her.

For the next seven years, Lena lived under the umbrella of her mother's care, and it cast a shade around her that both protected her from all that existed out there and kept her from really experiencing it, not as most people would experience it. She could hardly blame her mother for it, could she? If she'd lost two thirds of her family, she'd do all she could to protect the part that remained, too. Deep in the heart of her would always exist empathy and gratitude for all her mother had done for her… no matter how an even greater part of her resented her for it.

Her mother's brand of protection, for many of those years, had felt like restriction to the point of unfairness. The feeling had been born out of an ignorance of just how bad the world was outside their home, she knew it now, but wouldn't it have been better that she'd know the truth, that she'd grow stronger for it, instead of being kept in the dark, unable to prepare herself? Would she have been kept as she had been all those years for the rest of her life if… if…

She remembered the night more than most any other moment in her life. She'd awakened with a start, to the sound of an alarm. For several minutes she'd just sat there, like the pristine little doll she'd been, because somehow it would never occur to her to wander out and see what had triggered that alarm. It was still sounding, from somewhere below. What had finally gotten her moving was figuring out where it had to be coming from. Her mother's workroom. Lena wasn't allowed inside, but… well, there was that alarm.

To this day she wondered what would have happened if she'd gone down as soon as she'd woken up.

When she _had_ gone down, cautious, silent, shivering with a nagging fear, she'd found the door was open… No. The door was just gone. It was in pieces, exploding out into the hall. Lena had been so careful as she'd stepped around those, it had occupied her mind enough that she couldn't even think of what she might find past the field of debris, inside the workroom. Least of all…

When the police had come, she'd still been there, begging her mother's body to show some sign of life, anything at all. But it never came. Her mother wad dead, killed. Her killer was never caught. Seeker knows one day she'll find him, no matter how long it takes.

Without the protection of Lillian Luthor, Lena had been in for the rudest of awakenings.

Here she'd believed she'd been living, when all this time she was really more alive than living, and as it turned out, it was a very important distinction… especially when suddenly it wasn't about living anymore: it was about surviving. It took all of six months following her mother's murder for her to understand no one would make sure that happened, no one but herself. It took another six months, of doing just that, before she experienced another change, and after this one… her eyes were opened wider than she doubted even her mother's ever were. It would be the birth of the Seeker.

Truth was she never really knew what had triggered it. She had vague memories of an explosion, and then the next thing she'd known she was in a hospital, waking to hear the patient in the next bed calling loudly for someone to bring him something for his pain. Lena had been in pain, too, with some splitting headache like she'd never had before, but after a few days' rest, she'd been well enough to be let go; they needed the beds.

It was two more days before she'd started noticing something, even if she hadn't connected the dots back to the incident right away. At first, she was sure that she was hallucinating, that her head had been worse off than the doctors had been willing to admit, which in itself had been sort of terrifying, thinking how her life could matter so little to them. She'd hurried back to the hospital, demanding that someone check her brain, her eyes, anything, and prove to her that she really was healed. It wasn't her proudest moment, especially as she was escorted off the premises.

She'd let it go for a while, because it seemed as though the hallucinations had stopped. Days had passed, and although it couldn't be said that things were good, at least she wasn't seeing things that weren't there anymore. And then it had happened again. Standing in the middle of the street, she could see… It had been hard to comprehend at the time, to even put it into words. The best she could say was that there was a hole in the world. No, not exactly a hole, because the world _was_ there, it was just… different… Different enough that it felt like it didn't belong there, not in her world.

It wasn't until she realized that she was standing more or less in the same spot where she'd been standing the first time she'd had a hallucination, that it was the _same_ hallucination as the previous time, that her panic started to recede, to be replaced by some other feeling. Curiosity. She wasn't exactly versed in psychiatry or anything like that, but she was pretty sure that if this _was_ a hallucination, it wouldn't be this specific, wouldn't feel the way it did. Because she _could_ feel it, feel something, out there. Looking around her, to the other people in the area, she could just see, none of them saw it… This wasn't the kind of thing you could ignore. If you could see it, you'd be staring at it, you couldn't stop yourself, so then she had to be the only one.

With a caution she hadn't exercised since the year before, the night of her mother's murder, she'd walked toward that hole in the world, wondering the entire time just how close she'd be able to get to it before it went away and was revealed as a hallucination after all. But the closer she got, it didn't stop feeling real, no. It felt _more_ real. The nearer she came, it was as though the air on the other side was already in her lungs, urging her onward. It felt warmer, brighter… real, so real…

The moment she'd stepped through, it felt like she'd taken a leap, and when her feet had touched the ground again, she was in a brand new place. She couldn't know at the time that, for the first time in her life, she had crossed into another of what those in the know would refer to as quarters. She'd been much more concerned with the woman standing nearby who, upon seeing a girl appear out of nowhere, had done the only sensible thing: she'd started screaming. Lena had been so startled that she'd hurried back the way she'd come. Now she was back where she'd been, which was all fine, except that in the few seconds she'd been in that other place, she'd essentially disappeared into thin air, only to reappear, and this, in _her_ quarter or any other, didn't usually go unnoticed. Here, it had been a little boy, who'd pointed at her and started shouting. Afraid of what might happen if someone decided to question her, she'd started to run.

She had never felt so awake as she did that day, as she crouched in hiding, trying to understand just what she'd seen and felt. It wasn't real, it couldn't be, except it was. It was absolutely real, and much as she'd try to deny it she could never completely set it aside. Especially after they came for her.

For a while before the incident she had been thinking of heading off, somewhere… far away from everything she knew. There was nothing to tie her there anymore, except memories, and none of them good ones. So after lying low for a couple of days, until, hopefully, no one would remember her disappearing act, she'd finally made up her mind and she'd made a break for it. After traveling for a week, it had started to feel like her life had returned to normal, as normal as it could get. And then she'd found another hole in the world. It had been in the evening, and it would have been so easy not to realize what was in front of her, but she recognized it anyway. It took a while for her to make up her mind and attempt to cross over again. The little she could see of the other side, it wasn't the same as the other place she'd been, but the deciding factor, here as before, was one thing alone: the other side looked like paradise compared to where she stood. She remembered looking down at herself, eighteen years old, malnourished, clothes worn and torn from use, and thinking she would stick out as much as if she had a searchlight aimed over her. But it was night, it was so dark… If not now, then when? So she'd crossed over. She'd made sure no one was there to see her disappear, and she scanned the other side long and hard to also ensure no one would see her appear. Still, once she'd crossed, she hadn't waited there. She'd hurried to locate a hiding place, and, once she felt safe, she'd started to take in her surroundings. The first thing she'd noticed was the air… It was clean, of stench, of… well, dread. It had been so overwhelming that she'd just fallen asleep.

She'd awakened to daylight… and three people standing over her. A man, two women, looking at her like they'd been debating whether or not to wake her. Every part of her had told her to run, but there'd just been no way she could evade all of them. That was the first time she'd heard the word 'breacher.' That was what they'd called her, and the way they spoke, it seemed as though they'd all seen plenty of them already. It was their job to take her back 'where she belonged.' She hadn't had much fight in her then, and so she'd just followed, because it made sense. Of course this would all be too good to last, and she'd have to go back.

They couldn't see the hole… the breach? Not like she could. That became evident very quick, and for some reason she didn't feel the need to point out that she knew exactly where she had to go. They questioned her. She wouldn't give them her name, wouldn't tell them how she'd ended up here, and maybe something about her was sufficiently trustworthy to them. They didn't push. Instead, one of them opened up a breach with a thing strapped to his arm. It looked different than the one she'd come through, like this one was artificial while hers had been natural. Either way, it took her back to where she'd come from, and once there, the man and women had gone away.

The next two years had been her… education. She wasn't just surviving anymore, she was discovering, and that felt a lot like life. All she could do was question what had happened to her. The holes, the breaches, they were just there. The door to paradise, and point of first crossing, they were only two of several she happened to find. She hadn't crossed them, not since the night where she'd fallen asleep in paradise, and she wouldn't again, not for a long while. She had a feeling all it would get her would be another ride back with the breacher hunters. That was what she called them, even if they'd seemed like good people.

But then she couldn't ignore what she saw out there. It seemed every other place but her own was beautiful and peaceful, whereas she and the others on this side of the breaches were in misery more often than not, hungry more often than that, so hungry… So she started crossing over again… seeking food. She never felt bad for taking what she took. Even though deep down she knew she was only reasoning with herself, she would tell herself that those other places weren't real, and no one would miss this food, whereas the people on her side were starving. And seeing the looks on their faces when she handed them something from her loot… well that just made it that much more worth it. She realized she would draw attention before long, if word spread that there was a girl going around who seemed to have food stocks much beyond what was allowed. They would think she was a thief, which… well, she was, but not the way they would think. She'd just have to be covert about it.

It wasn't the cops or soldiers on her side she would have to deal with though. Two years after the night in paradise, they'd found her again. The breacher hunters. They'd been tracking her, apparently. They asked her name again. She refused to give it again. They asked how she kept finding her way into other quarters. That was another new word for her, too, but she said nothing. And after giving them nothing for a good long while, just as she'd told herself they would let her go and get back to her life, they had taken her and showed them… They had a ship, a massive ship, a spaceship. She wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen it, walked inside it.

There were other people on the ship, more than the three she'd met already, and it was one of them who had named her… Seeker. It was so strange, but once they'd said it, she sort of knew… For a long, long time now, she had felt a disconnect from herself. She wasn't Lena Luthor, not anymore. Lena Luthor had been a sheltered girl, whose family had died, one by one, until she was all alone. But Seeker… She could be her, she _had_ been her, and it had been the first time she'd really felt like she knew who she was.

For all she'd left behind that day, she'd also taken on many things to fill that void. She understood now more than she had ever thought possible about the world. She didn't know everything, but she knew plenty, thanks to these people… the ones she'd called breacher hunters but now knew as crew to this ship they called the Waverider.

The way they told it, she wasn't the only one who would find her way across breaches, in one way or another. There'd be those who would cross by accident and would be only too glad to be helped back the way they'd come, while there'd be others who, be it after crossing by accident or on purpose, would take the opportunity to do things they shouldn't. Whatever the case may be, it was up to them to make sure people were where they were supposed to be.

Eventually, Seeker had come to realize they had brought her on to their ship and told her what they'd told her for a reason. They appeared to trust her, and for that trust, they wanted to make a deal with her. They would look the other way as far as the food went, would even help her find a way to enable her while also not causing disturbances. In exchange, she would be like… their ear to the ground. If she heard or saw anything worth passing on to them, she would do so. She had accepted the deal gladly.

In the years since that day, their pact had been beneficial for both sides. Long gone was the frightened girl, the sheltered girl, the girl struggling only to survive. The despair had rolled off her shoulders, allowed her to stand up straight, head held high. She was Seeker, ally to near and far friends. She no longer had walls to box her in. Not even the walls of the world could hold her in place. There were always new things for her to discover, new people to meet.

 **THE END**

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 _Check out the next prelude... today!_


End file.
